Nonverbal communication is communication without words. You communicate nonverbally when you smile or frown, widen your eyes, move your chair closer to someone, wear jewelry, or raise your vocal volume, even when you say nothing.
Your ability to use nonverbal communication effectively can yield two major benefits: first, the greater your ability to send and receive nonverbal signals, the higher your popularity and attraction are likely to be. Second, the greater your nonverbal skills, the more successful you are likely to be in a wide variety of interpersonal communication situation, including business communication.
In this unit, we will look at five different channels of nonverbal communication. We begin our study of nonverbal messages by considering gestural communication.